Monthly Archives: February 2016

I have made some items for sale on Shapeways that pertain to Space:1999, the TV show.

These include items I’ve blogged about before, mostly during development when the models were printed on my home printer. Those were ok, but the size (especially of the smaller scaled items) meant that my home printer’s integrity was nearing minimum – ie: It was nearing the smallest scale I could print well.

However, Shapeways can print at a higher resolution, and I found the results quite clean and presentable.

Dinky Scaled Eagle Pods

The wonderful Dinky Eagles, produced in the 1970s, are revered by toy collectors and fans of the TV show. They came with one pod each, and Dinky made two versions: one with a passenger pod, and one with a freighter pod. The passenger pod was surprisingly accurate, though the freighter pod looked nothing like the pod used in the TV show. It was fun, however, and had a magnetic winch and four hazardous waste containers. But completely inaccurate.

So I made a pod model that plays the part of two of the alternate pods from the TV show: the pallet pod (which is a flatbed pod suitable for carrying multiple waste containers) and a winch pod (which is used to hoist and store containers in the nuclear waste depots.)

Here is the Dinky-scaled pod, which comes in two pieces: The pod itself, which is a flatbed pallet pod, but with a second part that is the winch.

Here it is as seen in the TV show:

A little paint and you can have a very accurate model. However, since the toy is not weathered, the pod works pretty well completely untouched. (Though it’s advisable to paint the underside legs and engine bells.

Here is the pod alone, without the winch:

I also have available on Shapeways the nuclear waste container. (Originally I modeled this in multiple pieces so I could print it at home in white and black so the black stripes would be clean and perfect. This didn’t translate well to Shapeways. The parts were too tight. So I made a single solid barrel available instead.)

It is hard to see with these photos, but the flatbed is ridged like the original, not smooth. The Shapeways render makes this more obvious:

This is what the pallet pod looked like in the TV show being unloaded by conveyor belt:

You may notice the bars at the top. These do not exist on the real pod model, but for the Dinky to pick it up and drop it, those had to be added. And the mechanism feels great! Fits perfectly!

Here is my home-printed pallet pod with containers, next to the Konami version.

Dinky Scaled Laboratory Pod

This has been in demand. I have had a lot of people in Gerry Anderson or Space:1999 forums request this one. It’s now available on Shapeways. It’s the Laboratory pod, seen here in a highly accurate larger model.

Here it is, printed on my home printers, cut up into appropriate pieces and printed in two colors:

This is Shapeways’ rendering of it:

Booster for Dinky Eagle

A companion piece for Laboratory Pods.

This is the ETSY preview image:

Dinky Scaled Passenger Pod (Replacement)

Sometimes people buy an Eagle incomplete, or they lost their original passenger pod. This is a vairly accurate pod that replaces the original. Fits perfectly, and is a bit more show-accurate than the original.

I also made available decal sheets (which you can print on sticker paper or decal paper) that wrap around the barrels, and looks like this (this is a sub-section. The full sheet includes many more copies of the barrel decal and the Alpha symbol, and also contains the smaller Konami version.

Konami Scaled Eagle Pods

I also created Konami-scaled Eagle Pods, which are just over 4cm long. They fit nicely into the Konami Eagle, and do not need extra “stuff” on top of the pod to make it fit like the Dinky did.

Here is a photo of one. I painted the winch barrels grey. You don’t have to.

Winch Pod

And the whole kit, unassembled:

Shapeways rendering for better detail:

Pallet Pod

Here it is unassembled, (shown with decal sheet, not included, but you can download it at the bottom of this section)

Shapeways rendering (for better detail)

These two pods come as two different models, rather than a single pod, with add-ons. This is only because I made the Dinky version more efficient, and have not had time to convert the Konami pods. But this way, you don’t have to share the pod itself. Get the whole kit for either the Winch or Pallet pods.

Moon Buggy

I won’t go into too much detail here, since I don’t have a lot of photos of these, but for now you can find links to my Moon Buggies on Shapeways, and see the few photos I do have.

What you should know, however, is that they come in two separate pieces you must order separately because Shapeways does not offer a convenient way to package projects that require multiple parts:

Moon Buggy for 22″ Round 2/MPC Eagle Model

This version is scaled to the new 22″ Eagle model kit.

Note: This one is far more accurate. I worked with an Amphicat enthusiast to fix some scaling and proportion issues, as well as adding a fair amount of more accurate detail. This one adds ridge detail at the back, the engine vents, engine bumps under the seats, even exhaust ports, more accurate dash, and a lot of other details you would not catch in the smaller ones. I also made the wheels more accurate.

I don’t have the 22″ Eagle, so I can’t show a photo posed next to one, but here are the Shapeways renderings:

Stun Gun

I make a 1:6 scale Stun Gun available to fit 12″ Action Figures like this one:

This gun comes in two pieces for convenience:

Easier to paint this way. Also, the guns themselves can be printed in silver. Some painting will be required to add the colored details. I show one here that I left in white, as a proposed Commander’s Special, or VIP Special version.

Launch Pads

The main issue is that there are only 3 pads. There are 5 surrounding Moonbase Alpha, and for those who want to make a more accurate version, you can purchase a version of the landing pad scaled to these original ones.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I added a tiny bit of detail. The house now has a docking arm.

I made these in two scales – to match the original, oversized landing pads, and I made a version scaled accurately to the rest of the Moonbase model kit parts.

There was a later re-issue of this kit, just a couple of years ago by MPC/Fundimensions that fixes this problem and provides 5 accurately-scaled landing pads. But if you can’t find that, or need extras:

As posted here (and I have not posted since, to keep it “live” for a while) I gave Carol a 3D printed gift for our Silver Anniversary. It was a Narwhal 3D printed in sterling silver, on a base of brass.

So for Valentine’s Day I thought I would follow that up with something else she loves – our house. And brooches. She absolutely loves brooches and has a very nice collection. What better, then, than to 3D print her a brooch of my own design based on our house?

First, I opted not to go with silver, because of cost. I thought a brooch might be better priced under $50. In sterling silver, it would have been more than double that. And I’m not discounting it for later. Or even Shapeways’s new material – aluminum, which, due to the printing method, is more expensive than stainless steel, which is what I went with.

I first took a model I created a year ago based on our new house:

I consolidated the various separate parts into one and began simplifying the model, squashing it into a very thin bas-relief type sculpture, and ended up with this:

First, I printed it on my own Afinia H480 printer to see if it would hold detail and be worth doing at all. It turned out fairly well considering the size and detail:

I had it printed in two different materials as a test. One in stainless steel, and one in nickel, thinking they would both be silver, but one shinier, and perhaps nicer, than the other. I got them back, and to my surprise, one was nearly gold in color. Since the house is grey, I wanted it in silver, so I focused on that one.

The middle one was printed in ABS plastic on my own Afinia H480 printer, as a test. I’m honestly not sure which brooch was which, but one is stainless steel and one polished nickel.

So next I had to design a Valentine’s Day card to put it in. My concept was of a foam-core card with a rectangle cut out, and the brooch fitted into that rectangle tightly. Then a collage of colored paper would be used to form a picture of our garden with the house planted firmly in the middle. I used a magazine and cut out various images to match grass, trees, and used a heart-shaped hole punch to cut out red paper for a small Japanese Maple I planted in the yard, and her beloved blue hydrangeas that line the front of the house.

I put it in a parchment envelope I made simply, and used hand-torn red and pink paper to cut out hearts for both the envelope and the front of the card.

The card itself is two pieces of foam-core wrapped in a crimson-red sheet of paper, scored and folded along the seams, so it would open nicely, and that the two cut-outs would hold the pin in place.

The pin, by the way, had no brooch pin attached during printing. That would have proven impossible. So I simply bought jewelry brooch pins from Michael’s Craft Store and used a binary epoxy to attach them to the backs.

And try not to tell Carol I got the wrong year on it! I brought over the 2015 from the Narwhal base, and forgot to change it!!! Grrr.

I then pinned the house brooch to a piece of corrugated cardboard and glued it to the card, holding it firmly in place.